We are looking forward to greeting all of you on Saturday, October 22nd for our 81st Saturday reunion! Our keynote speaker will be Naomi Shihab Nye, beloved poet and author who has written books of poetry for adults and young readers, picture books, essays, short stories, and YA fiction. Her numerous books of poetry include: You and Yours, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Fuel, This Same Sky, Red Suitcase, Hugging the Jukebox, and Honeybee. In 2010 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Our closing speaker will be the well-knownMo Willems, the much-loved award-winning author and illustrator of a score of books including Knuffle Bunny, the Elephant and Piggie series, the Cat the Cat series, and the Pigeon series. Before turning to write children’s books, he was a writer and animator for Sesame Street where his work won six Emmy Awards.

Come and hear all about the latest thinking in literacy and get ideas for how to ramp up the level of your reading and writing instruction! You can hear about aligning units to the Common Core State Standards, using learning continuum and curriculum maps to guide instruction, ways to teach Information and Argument Writing, how to raise the level of students’ talk, as well as scores of other practical, inspiring topics.

Our entire community will be here to welcome you and share our latest thinking and work!